About WE

WEis a Consciousness, a Campaign, and a Collaboration of people, organizations and social change movements from around the world.

WEConsciousness: WE promotes making a shift from "I" to "WE" in our individual actions and attitudes and in our societal priorities and policies.

WE Campaign: WE is an ongoing Awareness and Action Campaign; four WE Action Campaigns per year with culminating Global Public Events every 3 months. WE will Inspire, Inform and Involve millions of people through WE.net in solutions to:

Ensure basic human needs and well being worldwide

Restore healthy eco-systems and environmental stewardship

Create a culture of peace and nonviolence - from individuals to nation-states.

WE Collaboration - The WE Network, WE.net, provides a vehicle for connection, interaction and opportunity for unprecedented cooperation between people, organizations and movements. Utilizing advanced technology and intuitive web design, Partners of WE consisting of thousands of organizations and a mass movement of people create an ever-expanding social change network essential for a world that works for all.

Imagine 4 times a year, groups like MoveOn, Greenpeace and Amnesty International coordinating their action campaigns with hundreds of other global organizations, thousands of smaller groups and millions of people around the world, shifting societal consciousness and creating political will.

We, The World has developed the Strategic Alliances and has the team to achieve that level of global collaboration and effectiveness. In 2004, We, The World launched 11 Days of Global Unity which now annually has more than 700 associated events in over 60 countries. WE Campaign is based on the successful model of 11 Days of Global Unity Campaign.

People are looking for ways to come together locally and globally that can create real change because they can sense the danger we're in as a civilization. Scientists around the world have concluded that unless extraordinary measures are taken now, Global Climate Change and the Mass Extinction of Species (as many as 70-100 per day) will become irreversible with devastating consequences even in the wealthiest countries.

More and more people realize that our elected officials, our corporate CEOs, our mainstream media, and others in power are not sufficiently addressing environmental destruction, the mass extinction of species, escalating militarism and violence, the expanding epidemic of poverty, and the destruction of indigenous peoples worldwide (some of whom are the last remaining examples of cultures that have lived in sustainable harmony with nature for many millennia).

Even if somehow the huge obstacles were to disappear allowing emergency funding for the Kyoto/Copenhagen Accords, the U.N. goal to cut poverty in 1/2 by 2015 and other major initiatives, the underlying reasons for this rush towards global collapse will still be there.

Beyond emergency measures, what's needed is a major cultural shift, including a shift in consciousness and societal priorities, especially in the wealthiest countries. This is a shift away from what We, The World Advisory Board member Riane Eisler calls Domination Culture (and it's impending collapse) and toward Partnership Culture.

This is a moment when great change is possible. But don't imagine that the change, the shift to peace, sustainability and transformation, is just going to happen on its own. The major changes brought about by social movements throughout history have not happened as a result of a few people with vision like Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. Tremendous organizing was needed, and everyone's involvement counted.

"Unless we see our vote [in the U.S.] as part of a commitment to involve ourselves consistently and unrelentingly in the political process, our vote is wasted. This is because the forces that have led us to this economic, military, and political precipice exert such awesome power over the mechanics of Washington that no single candidate or group of legislators, whatever their intentions, can possibly go up against them unless armed with an irrepressible public mandate."Eugene Jarecki, filmmaker who produced the acclaimed documentary Why We Fight

To make the shift happen, we need "an irrepressible public mandate". And for that we need a major public awareness-raising and mobilization program that benefits from what some people call "conscious" or "sacred" activism. Social researcher Paul Ray estimates that there are 50-60 million people in the USA and 80-90 million in Western Europe who are what he calls Cultural Creatives who would love to see such a shift happen. But they don't know that there are so many others with their values.

We, The World has begun to help make the Cultural Creatives visible to each other so they can begin to act collectively! But to fully implement this, via the WE campaign, we need full participation at this stage by those, like you, who share these values. Together, you and WE have the potential to galvanize tens of millions of new people. Please join us!

Comprehensive: WE addresses not just one major issue but all issues of global concern.

Inclusive: WE not only partners with organizations and coalitions, WE also partners with other campaigns and movements.

Values including awareness of our interconnection, interdependence and understanding of our common goals are reflected in the WE campaign; these values are fundamental to all movements for social change.

WE not only promotes other groups' efforts, WE also produces events and programs through four action campaigns per year.

WE.net provides an essential network for social change agents to meet, interact and collaborate.

We, The World started WE. We, The World is a 501c3 non-profit organization, founded in 1998 and headquartered in New York City, whose mission is to maximize social change until we have a world that works for all.

The date is October 3, 2011. There have been 3 Global Initiatives as part of the "WE" campaign so far this year. They focused on Women & Equality (January through March), Ecosystems (April through June) and Unity and Peace (July through September)..

Together, these 3-month Campaigns have already succeeded in involving more people in an ongoing way than Live Aid, Live Earth or other similar global events. Results have varied regionally. In some areas political and legislative action was taken to allocate funds for greatly reducing poverty, ending social injustice or restoring damaged eco-systems. In other areas, it was about expanding non-military approaches to ending ethnic and border conflicts. Some regions had transformative cultural and educational public activities.

Participation in "WE" has taken place locally in thousands of towns and cities around the world. Organizers usually began by engaging and educating the public about important local issues related to the current Global Campaign theme. Then the focus would turn to generating local and regional political support to make crucial changes in legislation, business or government practices, diplomatic treaties, ecological improvements, education or whatever was most important in the region.

The participating local organizations were connected to others outside their area through the Network, www.WE.net, including an internationally accessible Calendar. Simultaneous high visibility Hub Events on each continent provided a means of rallying excitement and large scale consciousness-raising. As more recognizable leaders and celebrities participated in the Hub Events, mainstream media coverage increased substantially leading to even more ongoing participation around the world.

The creator of "WE" was a relatively small non-profit with the ambitious name of "We, The World". As a result of its persistent organizing efforts and strong supporters such as Desmond Tutu, Jane Goodall and Deepak Chopra, these Global Initiatives generated an unusual degree of collaboration between large organizations and coalitions including Amnesty International, Greenpeace, the Clinton Global Initiative, MoveOn, the International Council of Churches, the International Trade Union Confederation, four Years. Go., the Global Commons movement, the Evolutionary Leaders movement and many other large and small groups.

Though still new in everyone's minds, this approach appears to be overcoming the political logjams of the past in which special interests used their power and influence to maintain the status quo at the expense of the common good. Now, in many areas around the world, politicians have started to point to "an irrepressible public movement" when no longer giving in to these power brokers and special interests.

Around the world people are beginning to notice that something unique is happening. Now, instead of the predominance of political partisanship and conflict covered in the media, we are seeing a growing theme of people in different parts of the world coming together to solve their problems. There seems to be a new activism fueled by awareness of common goals. Even the most cynical commentators admit that we could be entering a new global era of collective public involvement.